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Now that the volcanic ash cloud is easing off from Europe and airports are re-opening, it's time to look ahead a bit. The first question is, will the Eyjafjallajökull (.OGG) volcano's ash cloud visit the US? According to Discovery News, the answer is: not likely. This article also provides good current answers, as best scientists know, to other questions such as "How long will this volcano keep erupting?" (could be months), and "Will the ash cloud cause cooling in Europe?" (nope). New Scientist looks at the question of whether planes can fly safely through volcanic ash clouds — and concludes there's a lot we don't know. "Ever since a Boeing 747 temporarily lost all four engines in an ash cloud in 1982, the International Civil Aviation Organization has stipulated that skies must be closed as soon as ash concentration rises above zero. The ICAO's International Airways Volcano Watch uses weather forecasting to predict ash cloud movements, and if any projections intersect a flight path, the route is closed. But although it is certain that volcanic ash like that hanging over northern Europe can melt inside a jet engine and block airflow, nobody has the least idea about just how much is too much. After a week of losing millions every day, airlines are starting to ask why we can't do better."

Seriously, Vorbis and Theora are not supported by default on either Windows or Mac OS X, so it's really a PITA to use those formats for 99.999% of the users.

Yes, but Slashdot tends to represent the.001% of the population that knows more about installing different codecs than getting sunshine, interacting with members of the opposite sex and those other boring activities that we don't have time for.

Right, well then I'll take a look.
But if you're wrong then I'm going to come over to your house, uninstall your fancy media player and install iTunes, Quicktime, Adobe everything and Java on your computer. So there.

Maybe we can't do better because the design of a jet engine is to suck in as much air as possible with tiny blades, compress it, then spit it out at an extremely high temperature that happens to remelt ash?

Thanks for posting the link to the Finnish F-18 engine photos. The airborne dust is clearly accreting in molten globs on hot section parts. These mixed oxide/silicate blobs may react with hot section materials - not sure what the specific materials are in the F-18 engines, but they're commonly nickel-based superalloys, often with ceramic thermal barrier coatings. I think the volcanic material might form eutectic (lower melting point) compounds with either the thermal barrier coatings or the underlying all

Yeah, totally. Sand particles are a lot bigger (the volcanic ash particles are around one micron in diameter), so they tend not to occur very far above ground level and are less prone to melting in the engine.

Maybe we can't do better because the design of a jet engine is to suck in as much air as possible with tiny blades, compress it, then spit it out at an extremely high temperature that happens to remelt ash?

Is it safe to assume that prop planes are not affected by aerial concentrations of volcanic ash? If so, how difficult would it be for the airliner to rent/lease a fleet of prop planes for the duration of this problem? I realize that no prop plane is going to have the passenger capacity of a jumbo jet and that this is a far less than ideal solution. Still, in the face of losing "millions a day" or in terms of "it's either this option or you're stranded here", does it become better than nothing?

You mean piston-engined planes, as there are planes (and helicopters) powered by "jet-like" engines. However, piston-engined planes went out of fashion sometime around 1960, as they are much more maintenance-intensive. And the world's air fleet is having maybe a 10% excess, and most of it is in old jet-powered planes (some of those might be forbidden to fly in passenger service in Europe and USA). And unlike words (which you can utter at a moment's notice), planes take a while to build.

If so, how difficult would it be for the airliner to rent/lease a fleet of prop planes for the duration of this problem?

Very difficult.

There is no-one in this world with dozens of aircraft available for rent. Let alone the hundreds that would be needed to cover existing jet services. And they are no drop-in replacement: slower, less range, less passenger capacity.

That and anyway it is not often that so big ass clouds happen. So what if air travel stops for a day or two every 20 years? Honestly it doesn't justify spending billions to R&D on how to improve the plane designs for it.

I was wondering if I was the only person who thought this whole incident is not the big deal it's portrayed as. I view this as an inconvenience at best, yet I keep hearing from various media about "dire economic impacts" and such. I don't recall the nautical shipping industry panicking like this over the fact that they can't reasonably send ships through a hurricane, and those happen much more frequently than volcanic eruptions of this magnitude. I get the impression that the rarity of this event that th

I keep hearing from various media about "dire economic impacts" and such. I don't recall the nautical shipping industry panicking like this over the fact that they can't reasonably send ships through a hurricane, and those happen much more frequently than volcanic eruptions of this magnitude. I get the impression that the rarity of this event that the airliners should be thankful for is also the very reason they are overreacting to it.

The problem is that we have become dependent on the 'ready today' ability to move people and goods around the world. Sixty years ago there was no FedEX overnight service that you could reliably depend on. The 1950s Tulip sellers in Holland sold their tulips to customers within a few tens of kilometers of their fields. Today, there are huge international shipping operations that depend on being able to ship those same tulips half-way around the world in less than 36 hours. Florists in Kenya [digitaljournal.com] are losing an estimated USD $2 million every day sitting on product that is literally rotting before their eyes.

I'm sure you can find many more examples of industry that is time sensitive and losing out due to this problem. Some examples that come quickly to mind are factories that depend on regular replenishment of components. There is a trend for smaller fabrication houses to stock only enough product to complete a fixed amount of orders. It's more economically reasonable for these small houses to stock only what they need and overnight or 2day more parts as they need them than to stock an indefinite supply. These companies are sitting idle and unable to fulfill contracts. The economic loss that potentially creates is huge. Imagine for a second the cost in lost future contracts, late penalties and loss of sales for a company who's model depends on being able to ship items around the world in less than two days. Now multiply that by all the countries that ship to, from and over europe. That's starting to get expensive.

Don't forget about all the stranded people that aren't getting their work done either. I'm staying at a hotel in Norway right now and I'm surrounded by oil industry people that are stuck here, trying to get back to the UK, France and the USA. They're trying their best to do their work, but there's only so much you can do from a lappy in the hotel loby. You can bet those folks are costing their companies some serious down time. Not only are they not doing their work, they're costing the company money staying in the expensive hotel, eating expensive food. That adds up over 7 million estimated stranded people.

Then there's the the airlines that are already hurting due to bad management, expensive fuel and a struggling economy. They have labor contracts they are obliged to fulfill. Just because their employees aren't flying and servicing, they're still entitled to their salaries. Loan and bond payments are still due even when 90% of your aircraft are sitting at an airport taking up space. You can bet every municipality that runs an airport is still expecting the airlines to pay their airport leases and gate fees even though no passengers are flying. Sum all that up and you're WAY in the red for this month.

Shipping is a slightly different ball game. When you put your stuff on a boat and ship it to Norway from New Orleans (we just did this a few weeks ago), you expect it to arrive at some point in the future. You don't expect it to arrive today, or on 28 April. You expect it to arrive at some point within 6-12 weeks (that's what the shipping company quoted). If you build your business model around that type of speed, you build it very differently. You can bet that a company that relies on shipped goods over airfreight has a much bigger buffer of raw materials and product. When a boat is delayed due to hurricane, crowded port, or whatever, it has an impact, but a much smaller impact. You can bet that a steel mill doesn't rely

Well, perhaps it's time that corporate shipping planners got a reminder that if you do just in time shipping & supply with zero buffer, eventually the supply chain will blink or shut down for a week due to uncontrollable acts of nature and you'll be boned.

I understand that this doesn't apply to live-shipment items like tulips or medical radioisotopes, but I find it disturbing how much of our economy has been reorganized into something resembling a program that will crash if there's so much as a cache miss in the name of efficiency. Then again, I'm very conservative when it comes to matters of economic robustness - the economy of Vinge's Namqem and the food supply for Asimov's Trantor are my idea of worst-case "how in the name of Christ could anyone anywhere have ever thought this was a good idea?!" scenarios.

Well, perhaps it's time that corporate shipping planners got a reminder that if you do just in time shipping & supply with zero buffer, eventually the supply chain will blink or shut down for a week due to uncontrollable acts of nature and you'll be boned.

Perhaps this is a good time to start thinking about some of the consequences of a global economy. There are definitely benefits to buying from your neighbor, but doing business locally has it's advantages as well. I'm not versed enough in economics to fully understand the implications of switching to a more localized business model, but this may be a great time to think abou the benefits of buying locally.

There's certainly a very logical argument for buying things like food locally and that's carbon emis

Well, those companies that are hurting financially should go to the CEOs and consultants to whom they paid $millions for bringing in this marvelous 'just-in-time' system, and ask for a refund. While they are at it, they could apologise to all the hourly-paid peon scum who argued against the 'just-in-time' system because of this very fragility.

Given that not only the already-failing airlines are losing money, but fast commerce is not really as viable, yes, it is a big deal. By fast commerce, I mean everything FedEx or DHL is needed for and more, such as fresh fish shipments.

It is not only the airlines that are suffering - lots of industries depend on just in time shipping of parts per airfreight. The BMW production lines in Germany are shut down as of today, with 56000 workers on forced vacation. Electronic parts for new cars all get airlifted these days. BMW also can't get gear parts to their US facilities. The overall impact is quite huge indeed.

I don't recall the nautical shipping industry panicking like this over the fact that they can't reasonably send ships through a hurricane, and those happen much more frequently than volcanic eruptions of this magnitude. I get the impression that the rarity of this event that the airliners should be thankful for is also the very reason they are overreacting to it.

The difference is that you can see a hurricane. Weather radar, satellite images and such can tell you exactly where the dangerous winds are at any

Oh, so now ICAO is going to profit from a study being done? Maybe they're just going to get some sort of assurance that it's safe to have molten obsidian chillin' in the jet engines of airlines, and can use that against them if they end up killing people for the sake of profit.

Airlines: We think its safe[1] to fly our planes NOW!ICAO: Really? Let's hear from Boeing and Airbus on what levels of ash are safe for their engines. So over to you Airbus and Boeing.Boeing:...Airbus:...ICAO: Hello? You guys still there?Boeing+Airbus: Uh hold on while we do a few tests...

There's plenty of evidence why the airlines aren't allowed to make that call:).

It's the job of the airlines to push the ICAO to let them fly ASAP.It's the job of the ICAO to not let them fly till they know it is safe enough.

From what I've seen, the pilots and engineers don't think it's that safe. Few pilots want to find out if they're as good and lucky as the ones who did some gliding in Indonesian airspace;).

[1] They may think that the economic impact to them of nobody flying after X weeks could be greater than one or two plane problems/crashes.

You geeks should probably have a clear concept of how volcanoes work. It's like a gigantic pool of molten sebum seething and swelling just under the surface of the earth. When this sebum reaches a vent or finds a weakness in the skin, it erupts pus and bacteria all over. In some areas, these "pimples" are very common. Many can be found on or near the so-called Ring of Fire.

After erupting, the area is still tender and prone to subsequent eruption, but a treatment of peroxide and salicylic acid can help clear it up and prevent infection.

As I was saying, just because one volcano calms down on one side of the Earth, another volcano may be getting closer to eruption on the other side (Yellowstone). If you think pimples on your face are bad, wait until you get one on your ass.

Every time people ask why we fund the space agencies, here is your answer. The majority of the data we DO have in this situation is from downlooking satellites from ESA and NASA.The The Deep Space Climate Observatory was mothballed for almost a decade and yet it has sensors on it that could be helping significantly with measuring ash density source [74.125.45.132]. There are several other vehicles that can help significantly with this and other problems that cost many, many times the project cost, but all people see is the big number at the end of each budget, not the benefits.

Every time people ask why we fund the space agencies, here is your answer. The majority of the data we DO have in this situation is from downlooking satellites from ESA and NASA.

Were the US satellites NASA or NOAA? (Or somebody else?)At least in the US, cutting funding for NASA will have less impact than you might think because they aren't sole [non military/intelligence] satellite operator the government has.

The Deep Space Climate Observatory was mothballed for almost a decade and yet it h

Yeah, tell that to the first nation that starts mining the asteroid belt or mars for ore. You could do it with all robots but you still can't repair and maintain them, so someone is going to be out there.

I don't think it was about "safe".
It's a sad but safe bet that the airlines weren't worried about people dying, but rather worried about them suddenly becoming litigious hypochondriacs.
Very likely that at least one person would claim that the volcanic ash gave them a horrible disease or whatever, and then, well...
Let's just say it's a good thing those planes stayed on the ground.

It isn't only about the engines; BA 009 did suffer engine failure over 20 years ago, and they managed to restart all their engines and land, but the incident didn't stop at the engines. On final approach, they also found out that they could hardly see outside. Once they landed (doing an instrument landing), they also found out that all the attack surfaces had been sandblasted; the wings, the tail, but also the windshield. Flying through microscopic particles of stone or glass isn't just a danger for the eng

At $10M per and a significant fraction of that just to do a teardown and evaluation I'm not sure that anyone wants to fund that kind of research. Perhaps the government could do it with surplus engines from retired F-16's or something.

Euhm... I don't think it's a good idea to actually run a full-sized jet engine inside a wind tunnel. Because that's what you will have to do, after all the problem is not as much the sandblasting but the melting of ash inside a hot engine. And you would have to do that for many hours on end, without melting the wind tunnel in the process.

Maybe overclockers have an idea on how to get rid of all that excess heat.

After a week of losing millions every day, airlines are starting to ask why we can't do better.

Tell you what. Let all the bean counters volunteer to get into a jet and fly back and forth through an ash plume until the engines fail and the jet crashes, killing everyone.

THEN ask that stupid fucking question again.

The reason nobody can say is there's no metrics for uptake by a jet and no guarantee that the ash plume is going to be consistent with whatever testbed is set up.

Honestly, losing millions a day? Do they want to invest a couple billion a year (if not a month) into testing every plausible (and some implausible) ash-to-air-to-engine-intake ratio for every commercial jetliner extant?

With various air carriers already cutting finances close to the bone, I don't think they really have the money to spend on this kind of research or on remediation methods and practices for overhauling engines on planes after scenarios like this.

Honestly, losing millions a day? Do they want to invest a couple billion a year (if not a month) into testing every plausible (and some implausible) ash-to-air-to-engine-intake ratio for every commercial jetliner extant?

I think you're confused about who "they" are.The airlines have never been in the business of testing anything.In this case "they" are the engine mfgs &/or the government.

Since the MFGs are saying "don't use our engines under these conditions,"even if airports weren't shut down, no airline's insurance carrier would cover damage anyways.

You can't live a life without risk. Nor is the avoidance of risk worth any price (otherwise we'd drive a tank at 5km/hr while wearing a helmet and a flak jacket to go to the corner store for milk.) (And then not drink the milk for fear it was contaminated.) Ask all those people stuck in the wrong part of the world whether they'd take a flight if the chance of dying was 1 in 100,000 rather than the normal 1 in 9,000,000 [planecrashinfo.com]. I think you'd find most of them would accept it as a worthwhile risk.

Given that I already had three cars totalled by some idiot rear-ending me while I was waiting at a light, I might very well go for the tank option soon. Next fucker to rear-end me gonna get ground into dust by my new tank's threads - after bouncing off the reactive armor. Eat that!;)

It's not just the airline bean counters who are worried about this. I'm being directly affected. I was in Europe for work, and was supposed to fly back to the US last Sun. I've been stuck here since. I'm quite desperate to get back home and back to my life.

It may seem cool to be stuck in Europe, but in actuality it's not. It feels semi-prison like in that I'm stuck in a place (albeit a very nice, historical and cultural one) and unable to get home. Things are going on at work, with friends, family and

1) The plane and plane engine manufacturers let them know what levels of ash are OK.2) The weather people say what levels of ash are out there.3) It is reasonable to believe that 2 < 1 in 99.9% of the flight paths.Or4) There's extremely little ash out there.

If they allow flights without the above, then they're not doing their jobs properly.

Do they want to invest a couple billion a year (if not a month) into testing every plausible (and some implausible) ash-to-air-to-engine-intake ratio for every commercial jetliner extant?

That's an interesting number, I'd like to see how you come up with that number for doing research.

Personally I'd be interested in getting more detailed information about how volcano ash hurts a jet engine. We know that enough of it can cause engine failure, and at some point the ash concentration gets so small it has no effect. How small is too small? Do different kinds of ash have different effects? These are interesting questions, and if someone wants to research them, I'd like to hear the answers.

virtually all propeller planes that carry passengers are turbo props, i.e. just as vulnerable.
Small piston-driven aircraft might be affected to a lesser degree but they still need an airfilter that isn't clogged with dust to function. I don't know if the volcanic ash particles are smaller than the normal particulates that air filters are designed to remove. Hope so, otherwise a lot of cars will be having expensive engine problems, too.

It seems amazing that we have avoided something like the 1783 eruption that lasted for two years and killed over a hundred thousand. Can you imagine air traffic disrupted for years? BTW, the same thing could happen to us from the Aleutians.

Might be an option in that scenario. I still wonder how one could reliably counter the sandblasting effect that would erode aerodynamic features under constant use in a year-long lasting ash cloud. High-end ceramics for the leading edges of wings and prop blades?

If European airspace was closed for 2 years we might see a return of the era of the luxury cruise liner or even better, of the zepellin (imagine if London to Berlin took 8h but in an airship with the room and conforts of a small cruise ship).

Some think so [io9.com]. Icelandic volcanoes seem to go through cycles, and a high activity one could be starting. Maybe this volcano alone could not be so bad, but more and for long time could have severe consequences, in economy and maybe global climate.

Some scientist in the Netherlands has stated that the whole problem is overhyped. Yes of course it is dangerous to fly through an ash-cloud within 100 miles from the vulcano, but after some days (and that is what we are talking about) most of the big particles in the cloud have fallen to the earth, and the rest has been deluted to such an extend that there is no acute danger. Planes also regularly fly through other dust clouds (from deserts) and that too is not a reason for planes to be grounded.

- Ash melts at 1100 degrees, below operating temperature of jet engines, and fuses into the engine- Windshields can be abraded so badly you cannot see out of them- Ash is dry and doesn't show up on radar, so new sensors are needed so pilots can discover it- There are no standards for how much ash is allowed or how to test aircraft against it.- Possibility that propellor planes and helicopters are safer

So my conclusions for now are:- Need better rules, and government should pay for the experimentation- Need better intelligence, so we can be sure a route is safe- Need to examine flying propellor planes slowly at very low altitudes below the ash- Nobody has thought about ash bothering ground transportation. Does it?- Need alternative transportation
o Trains, buses, boats
o Slower aircraft.. hovercraft or balloons? (they still have engines though)
o Need a closed engine design. (chemical or hydrogen powered electric closed engine?)
o This is a common problem, more needs to be done for global transportation security. I even found a volcanic explosion in Japan yesterday at the ash advisory center, though it is not in the news at all.http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/svd/vaac/data/TextData/20100420_SAKU_0403_Text.html [jma.go.jp]

They resume flights. Things appear perfectly normal. In a few weeks time, small numbers of engine failures and instrument and control failures start happening, apparently randomly. It is said to have no relation to the dust. It is very hard to track down the cause, or tell if its unusual for some reason, or just statistical noise, because the planes have been flying all over the world, not just in the affected areas. A few weeks after that, we have three or four total engine failures at once over buil

That seems unlikely. Maybe I'm just naive but I'm pretty sure they will have thorough inspections of the engines after flying through the ash clouds. Not doing so could be catastrophic and I doubt any airline would risk it (not to mention they are supposed to do a lot of inspections before flights anyway).